She was, he knew, waiting for
his appearance to begin again energetically. In their room it struck
him forcibly that he must make some mental diagram of his course, his
last unshakable position. Certainly in admitting that he had called
Savina Grove by her first name he had justified Fanny's contention that
he had kissed her. Fanny should have asked him how many times that had
occurred. "A hundred," he heard himself, in fancy, replying. By God, he
would like to say just that, and have it all over, done with. Instead
he must lie cunningly, imperturbably, and in a monumental patience.
Why? He hadn't, pointedly, asked that before. Things here, his life,
the future, must be held together.
After he had descended, he lingered in the hall: in the room where his
wife was sitting not a sound was audible, there wasn't an indication of
her presence. Lee turned away to the mantel-piece dominated by
Cytherea. Here, he addressed himself silently to the doll, you're
responsible for this. Get me out of it. I'll put it all in your hands,
that hand you have raised and hold half open and empty. But his, he
added, in an embittered lightness, was an affair of matrimony; it was a
moral knot; and it had nothing to do with Cytherea, with the shape, the
sea, the island, of Venus. She was merely disdainful.
Fanny was seated in the chair, the exact position, in which he had left
her.
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